HE was said to have been born in Fiji on February 18, 1945 and was educated in Melbourne, Australia.
Known as Mohammed Rafiq Khan, he also used names like Peter Khan, Dr Ralph Khan, Mohammed Rafiq Kahan and sometimes Mohammed Rafiq.
According to a report in The Fiji Times on June 3, 1988, he was suspected to be the man behind the shipment of the illegal weapons to Fiji.
It was reported that Khan came into prominence in Fiji when he established the Budget Marketing Corporation at Raiwaqa in Suva in 1973.
BMC offered discount buying for its members, who paid $5 for their cards.
The corporation closed several months later amid angry charges from thousands of housewives and Khan disappeared with thousands of dollars, it was reported.
Also, it was reported that Khan admitted 28 previous convictions in Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Bermuda and Canada, and he was believed to be operating out of London and Sydney in 1988.
On June 4, 1988, we reported that a Suva magistrate once described Khan as “a classic example of a smooth-talking conman”.
Khan was sent by his father to Melbourne in February 1961 and he attended high school there but soon came under the police spotlight.
It was reported that on April 1, 1963, Khan was convicted of breaking into a garage and 13 days later of stealing a car.
He was either deported or urged to voluntarily depart for Fiji in July 1964.
Furthermore, we reported that records of Khan’s movement showed that he was deported from New Zealand to Canada in July 1966 after being convicted of making false statements to police, theft and unlawful handling of goods.
It is believed he was deported from North America in 1969.
“He must have re-entered Australia again illegally because in 1969, he was listed as being charged with assault in New South Wales,” it was reported.
“Khan was again before the New South Wales courts in 1972 and was sentenced to two years jail with a non-parole period of nine months for stealing a car.”
Also, it was reported that Khan was deported to Canada on April 19, 1973, but he surfaced in Fiji that year and established BMC and later disappeared with thousands of dollars.
In 1975, he was jailed for six years in Canada for attempted fraud involving $500,000. He was then known as Dr Ralph Khan.
Khan was reported to have divorced his Pakistani wife in 1980 and returned to Fiji, and his life of crime continued here.
He was jailed for five years by the Suva Magistrates Court in 1981 for three counts of fraud and three counts of obtaining money by false pretences involving $6139.
Known as Kahan then, he admitted his 28 previous convictions in different countries, including some in Fiji.
It was reported that in March 1986, Khan reappeared in Australia and worked for a short period as a process worker before he was arrested and expelled in June 1986.
Following the discovery of the cache of arms and ammunition in Australia in late May 1988, Khan was a sought after man by Australian police.
On June 3, 1988, a senior officer with the Fiji Police Force described Khan as a notorious criminal who had a record of dealing in large arms shipments.
“He is bad news — he has convictions here, he is big time,” the then-Assistant Superintendent of Police Tomasi Kubu had told this newspaper.
Mr Kubu was reported saying that Khan’s name had been associated with the shipping documents for the transport of the seized arms aboard the ship from North Yemen.
On June 6, 1988, we reported that three men — two in Australia and one in Fiji — were charged in connection with the illegal shipment of arms to Fiji.
Superintendent Alan Sing of the Australian Federal Police had said then that police regarded one of the men charged in Australia equally as significant to Khan.
He had said that the man was part of a network of hundreds of Fiji people operating in Australia which opposed the government of military leader Brigadier Sitiveni Rabuka.
The country’s first coup was staged by Rabuka on May 14, 1987, which overthrew Dr Timoci Bavadra’s Fiji Labour Party-led coalition government.
SP Sing had said then that there were more people in Australia involved than they first had any idea, saying they did not realise the significance of the network there.
He had also said that the two arrests in Australia brought police closer to finding missing arms ring-leader Khan, who was thought to have left Australia.
Ponipate Lesavua, who was a detective sergeant with the Fiji Police Force in 1988, was part of the team that recovered the weapons from various places in the West.
“After being briefed by our boss in Suva, I left for Lautoka with some other detectives and met up with the late Govind Raju, who was the investigating officer in the case,” Mr Lesavua said.
“We then went to Lautoka Wharf to start investigations as the container had arrived there and it had already been cleared and taken away.
“During the investigations, we learnt that Ralph Khan was staying at a hotel in Nadi but when we went there, he had checked out and left the country too.”
Mr Lesavua said after Khan’s arrest in England sometime in June 1988, Mr Raju and another police officer left for London to interview Khan.
“But they couldn’t interview Khan because there was an illegal government in power in Fiji at that time and they were not recognised by England.”
He said of the suspected 15 tonnes of weapons that arrived in the country in the container, the security personnel were able to recover about 12 tonnes.
“About three tonnes of the weapons that came into the country are still believed to be missing,” he said.
Mr Lesavua said after the recovery of the weapons, police officers put them in the same container and moved it to Suva.
He said the container was kept at the military camp in Nabua and he gave the container key to his boss then, as police awaited a court order on where the weapons should go.
“The court order came after two months to return all arms and ammunition recovered to the military and I made a certificate and passed the key to the military.
“But little did I know that after a very long time, I would again see some of the illegal weapons that I and other police and military officers had recovered from the Western Division,” said Mr Lesavua.
* NEXT WEEK:
Seeing the weapons again
